Thursday, July 27, 2006

Neo-Nazi influences in radical Islam

The Roman Summit failed yesterday, much to the Vatican's dissapointment.

Israel and Hezbollah continue duking it out.

Al Qaeda has thrown their hat in the ring calling for world wide holy war. (I thought that's what they have been doing however.) "It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahri said. "We will attack everywhere."

The neo Nazi President Mohamoud Ahmadinejad of Iran keeps up his threaats, while students in Iran are volunteering to go fight in Lebanon. " Iran is a sworn enemy of Israel and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map". -While Israel accuses Iran of arming Hizbollah"

No wonder polls are saying that Americans are by and large pessimistic about the future. Over 50% of those polled feel The war in the Middle East will escalate to full scale war involving other nations.

It is an incredibly unstable time all around. I can't help but take it all very seriously. A person in my office commented how unusual it is for our country to be at war and yet nothing has changed in our daily lives. So much so, that if one does not watch the news and has no one they know in the armed forces, one's lifestyle is not at all affected. We are in big denial I think.

Naturally I have been pondering the Arab-Israeli hostilities and wondered what it all means. Did you ever read Roy Schoeman's"Salvation Is From The Jews"? It's a couple of years old now but still available and relevant of course. Mr. Schoeman is a convert to Catholicism from Judaism, although he sees his conversion more as coming into the fullness of faith, as do I.

He traces the history of Judaism very simply and intelligently, as well as it's fullfillment in the Roman Catholic Church. I misplaced my copy but I recalled many points of his connecting the current virulent anti-semitism of the Arab world and radical Islam to Nazi Germany. The above picture is from Roy's website of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Hitler. They were in each other's back pockets, as it were, when it came to anti-semitism. An irony of course because Arabs are also non-Aryan semites. Isn't it curious however that Islam and Naziism could find a common ground. Hitler wanted to use Islam to help exterminate the Jewish people. Schoeman believes that today, radical Islam has continued the Nazi legacy. He's not alone in this thought.

From David Greenberg I have this concise history which corresponds succinctly the association of Nazi influence and fascist Arab anti-semitism we are seeing today:

"Then came the Holocaust, which not only marked the pinnacle of European anti-Semitism but encouraged it in the Arab world as well. Because Arab leaders shared the Germans’ hostility to Britain and France—the dominant colonial powers in the Middle East—they were eager to make common cause with Hitler, despite Nazi belief that they, like the Jews, were inferior to Aryans. The mufti of Jerusalem, among others, actively spread propaganda about “Anglo-Saxon Jewish greed” while praising the Nazi war effort. Even years later, sympathy for Nazism could be easily found in Arab culture. When Israel apprehended Adolf Eichmann in 1960, a Saudi newspaper headline read, “Capture of Eichmann, Who Had the Honor of Killing Five Million Jews.”

If the Holocaust nurtured Arab anti-Semitism, it also helped to discredit such bigotry in the West. Indeed, it helped mobilize support for a Jewish state internationally. In 1948, Israel was finally granted independence. As if to welcome their new neighbor into the region, the Arab countries promptly invaded. Israel repulsed the attacks, and in the three Arab-Israeli wars that followed (1956, 1967, 1973), the Jewish state managed to survive and even to expand its territory. Most controversially, it took over the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan, which were home to large numbers of Palestinian Arabs." [snip]

I always go back to Our Lady of Fatima and her call for prayer, penance, and fidelity to the Commandments, as the means to acquire peace, that peace God has entrusted to her. I just can't help but think there is a connection of her apparitions in 1917 to the times we are now living, even if only by inference. We must pray, pray the prayers of the rosary for peace.

4 comments:

I think it may be a big mistake to think the these Islamofacsist terrorists know their faith. I heard a very interesting caller once on the Michael Medved show. He was Mormon missionary and had gone to France for his two years of compulsory missionary service. He worked in the Muslim ghettos with these people and what he found is that they didn't know a thing about their faith--a few terroristic catch phrases was all that they were capable of. He was supposed to witness to them about Mormanism, but instead he actually studied their faith and then started teaching it and showing these young men what Islam really said...I found it interesting. I think most Nazi's had no clue what they were actually following, just that they were out for Germany as homeland and that they were fueled by anti-semitism--not the ordinary soldier, he was fighting fo his cuntry, but the people screaming in the streets supporting Hitler. I am sure with most, if you had sat down and tried to understand their beliefs you would have gotten blank stares, or the catch phrases of their day.

Therese, excellent insight, I never thought of it in that way. Last night on The World Over on EWTN with Raymond Arroyo was a Melchite Archbishop who said 95% of the Muslims in Lebanon are good and peaceful and live amicably with Christians, it is the radical Hezbollah, the minority, who use sayings from the Koran to incite violence. I agree that it was likewise in Nazi Germany, which remains a warning for us all not to let our emotions become impassioned by radical rhetoric, such as a crusader mentality that may have had it's place in history yet would accomplish nothing in our times, while being incompatible with contemporary peace processes and negotiations. As the Archbishop said, prayer for peace is good and needful, but peace will be achieved through political means and not by violence, hatred, and continuous bloodshed.

Veritatis Splendor

About Me

... My idea of what I am is falsified by my preoccupation about what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to emulate one anothers imagined greatness....If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants me to be. I have asked myself whether I wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become... only to realize that I do not admire what everyone else seems to admire. I have only thus begun to live after all... But it is very late. - Adapted from a quote by Thomas Merton

Holy Face of Jesus

Show us your face and we shall be saved. "Each soul is the object of My special love. That is why I am so grateful to those who are resourceful and bringing back sinners to Me. Keep this in mind then. I gave My life for them in the most atrocious torture, for these poor beloved ones. A humble repentance, and they are already on My heart. So speak gently to them. Speak with tenderness. A brusque remark could drive them farther away." - He and I

Prayer to St. Michael

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.